Reminiscences of Chicago and Englewood

R E M I N I S C E N C E S O F C H I C A G O A ND
E N G L E W O O D
EDWARD E . OSBERG
History has always held me spellbound—world history, the
thrilling story of America, and the specific tale of Chicago, my
home town. Much have I learned and enjoyed at the Chicago
Historical Society in Lincoln Park. The exhibitions and
dioramas there have acquainted me with the history of the
Windy City. But this d i d not completely satisfy me. Not until I
stood on the exact site of the origin of the Chicago Fire of 1871
did I recall something from my earliest memories.
My grandfather had told me stories about his boyhood in
Värmland. Among the many tales was one that became im­pressed
on my mind and memory more than any other. When my
grandfather was fifteen years old, news of the great Chicago Fire
had reached his home town of Gunnarskog near Arvika. A l l
Swedes must have been shocked that a city larger than Stock­holm
had burned to the ground.
Inside the foyer of the Chicago Fire Academy is a bronze
plaque that states: " O n this site stood the home and barn of Mrs.
O'Leary where the Chicago Fire of 1871 started. Although there
are many versions of its origin, the real cause of the fire has
never been determined." I was surprised to learn that the
famous address, 137 De Koven Street, was so close to the down­town
area. Visiting the Academy on one of my return trips to
Chicago, I stepped up on the cement block, twelve by eighteen
inches in size, and viewed a diorama of the fire. Another plaque
told me: "You are now standing on the spot of the origin of the
great Chicago Fire on the night of 8 October 1871." There were
also many photographs of its aftermath in their collection.
As I pondered all this, I thought again about my grandfather
Anders Osberg. Born in poverty on 21 June 1856, he was a teen­ager
at the time of this fire. He never told me this, but he must
have thought a great deal about the new American nation and
very possibly Chicago, too. I feel sure that he never harbored
any thought of actually going there himself. He knew that many
200
Swedes from other provinces, even some from Värmland, had
emigrated to the United States. This is what he read in the
newspapers, and I believe he often wondered why many had left
the old country and where they all had settled. In his own com­munity
there was vague talk about such faraway places as New
York, Brooklyn, Jamestown, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Bel¬
lingham; but this was all too remote to be taken seriously.
Grandfather had often mentioned whenever I complained
about needing to go to school that he had only 172 days of edu­cation
in Sweden. By the time he was fifteen—while Chicago
A n d e r s O s b e r g a n d h i s g r a n d s o n E d w a r d , 1 9 1 3 .
201
burned—he was doing a man's job draining and tilling the wet
fields of western Värmland and helping his family eke out a liv­ing
on their small acreage. Married at twenty-four, he and my
grandmother became the parents of two children, their daughter
Emma and their son Hjalmar, who many years later in Chicago
became my father.
During these years, Chicago had recovered from the disas­trous
fire and was moving steadily toward becoming a major city.
The downtown area was totally restored, Swift and Armour had
developed the great stockyards, and the southern city limits had
already extended to 39th Street. Some seers ventured the opin­ion
that one day Chicago would reach all the way to Blue Island.
In the meantime nearly equidistant between 39th Street and
Blue Island, a small and struggling community was developing
around the junction of two railroads. This little community had
no real name yet. Some called it the Junction, some the Chicago
Junction, others Junction Grove, and still others the Rock Island
Junction. It was a small portion of Lake Township, a vast and
sprawling unincorporated area of wet marshland extending from
Hyde Park on Lake Michigan to Summit, Illinois.
Just before the Chicago Fire of 1871, a newcomer to Junction
Grove suggested that the place be named Englewood after her
home town in New Jersey. So Charles R. Hatch, the superinten­dent
of the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railway,
posted an order stating that "the name of the station at Chicago
Junction has been changed to Englewood." This made it official
in everyone's mind. Incorporation soon followed, and it has
been known as Englewood ever since.
In the large-scale immigration that came from all over Europe
following the American C i v i l War, Swedes were counted in ever
increasing numbers. For some reason, many of the pioneer
Swedish immigrants seemed to favor this new town six miles
south of Chicago. Immediately after the fire, there was a virtual
stampede for lots and homes in Englewood. The newly drained
land was good, streets and walkways were being plotted, and a
great building boom was on.
Traditionally, it seems that the Irish became policemen and
firemen, precinct captains and politicians; the Poles and other
Eastern Europeans steelworkers and laborers in the stockyards
and factories; but the Swedes—at least the Englewood ones—
became tradesmen and shopkeepers. Hardly a building in E n -
202
glewood was erected without the precise and painstaking work
of Swedish carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, plasterers, and
cement finishers.
At the time of the Fire, there were Swedes living in Chicago;
but it was really not until the 1880s and 1890s that the great ava­lanche
began. Emigration from Sweden was picking up momen­tum,
and the forty years following 1880 saw tens of thousands of
Swedes arriving i n America each year. Chicago, the city arising
from the ashes of the Fire, got its fair share of these Swedes.
They settled mainly i n four areas: the Belmont and Anderson-ville
districts, both on the north side, and the large Englewood
area and Grand Crossing at 75th and Cottage Grove, on the south
side.
My father Hjalmar Osberg came to America in 1899 at the age
of nineteen. He first tried his luck in the woods of northern
Minnesota as a lumberjack during the winter and on the farms of
North Dakota as a field hand during the summer. After several
years, he came to Chicago to learn the barbering trade and
landed on 59th Street in the very center of the Swedish part of
Englewood. Within a few years, he was able to bring his mother
and father from Värmland to America. He had met my mother
Signe Anderson at night classes in English at Englewood High
School, where dozens of Swedes came to learn the new lan­guage.
The night school English classes at Englewood High
proved to be invaluable to the newly arrived immigrants. Not
only d i d they learn the language quickly but they also had much
fun and frivolity. Many romantic matches for life were made
there, and my parents are prime examples of this.
My mother Signe had emigrated from Eskilstuna, Söderman­land,
in the spring of 1903 at the age of fourteen together with
her mother and father and a younger brother. Four older ones
and a sister had preceded them to Chicago several years earlier
to gain a foothold in the land of promise. They had all become
residents of the Swedish community in Englewood.
At the age of seventeen, my mother became a charter member
of the Linnea A i d Society. It was formed on 9 February 1906 at
the home of Mr. and Mrs. N . A. Nelson, who lived on West 60th
Street near Englewood High School. Twenty women from three
Swedish churches were the founders; and at the first meeting
Dr. A P. Fors, pastor of Bethel Lutheran Church, was present.
At this meeting the name Linnea was adopted. They decided to
203
S i g n e A . A n d e r s o n , C h i c a g o , 1 9 0 7 . M a r r i e d H j a l m a r O s b e r g,
1 9 1 0 .
meet regularly at Bethel Church, and membership invitations
were sent to the women of all the Swedish churches in Engle­wood.
An overwhelming response brought about the election of
officers and the writing of a constitution. One of their first proj­ects
was to supply linen and completely furnish a ward in the
newly erected Englewood Hospital. They also paid for this hos­pital's
patients who were without financial means.
Mother wore her Linnea pin proudly, and even as a small boy I
was aware of the vast scope of this organization. In 1909 the so­ciety
decided to expand the area of its work by aiding patients in
more hospitals and many other needy persons of Swedish de-
204
scent on the south side. Several Swedish homes for the aged in
Chicago have benefitted from and been cheered by visits from
the women of Linnea.
The membership dues were only ten cents a month, and
within twenty years there were about 1,000 women in the soci­ety.
Contributions by more affluent members far exceeded the
dues. The principal source of income, however, came each fall
from the proceeds of the annual concert by the Swedish Choral
Society, which usually performed Handel's M e s s i a h at Orches­tra
Hall accompanied by an ensemble from the Chicago Sym­phony
Orchestra. This was the musical highlight of the year, and
my mother would rather miss a meal than this extraordinary
production.
In unity there is strength, and it can be said that the Linnea
A i d Society brought about greater cooperation among the people
of different denominations in Englewood. Linnea has always
been true to its botanical name, for during its existence it has
strewn many a flower and spread much sunshine on the hard
paths of life—to uplift, cheer, and encourage human beings in
need.
Englewood was annexed to Chicago on 29 June 1889, eighteen
years after the Fire. When my father came here a dozen years
later, he was most happily surprized to find a large colony of
Swedes. The Englewood Businessmen's Association was an
outstanding civic organization. One of its first presidents was
Clarence O. Rosen, a Swedish realtor and a leader of the rapidly
growing Swedish community. Englewood sent a governor to
Springfield and later to Washington as a U.S. senator—Charles
G. Deneen. Many Swedes wanted him to run for the presidency.
His sister Florence was an excellent teacher at Englewood High
School for forty years.
My father's bank and the one for most of the Swedish busi­nessmen
was the United State Bank of Englewood at 60th and
South Halsted streets. It opened on 14 January 1914 with Simon
Heck as president and Carl Lundberg as cashier. The well-known
Swedish physicians and surgeons, Virelius and Dahl¬
berg, had just opened their South Shore Hospital, and the
Swedes streamed to them for health care. My own grandfather
was one of Dr. Dahlberg's first patients for treatment of a lip
cancer with the new radium regimen.
When Englewood needed a second high school, the officials
205
decided to name it the Robert Lindblom Technical High School
for Robert Lindblom, a member of the Board of Education from
1893 to 1896 and of the C i v i l Service Commission from 1898 to
1902. He was born in Örebro, Sweden, in 1844, migrated to
America at twenty years of age, and became a successful Chicago
businessman. He survived the Fire and later became one of the
most influential promoters of the 1893 World's Columbian Ex­position
as well as one of its directors.
The great Swedish immigration to the Englewood district
continued unabated all through the 1890s and the first two de­cades
of the twentieth century. Then just before the calamitous
stock market crash, it came to a sudden halt. Perhaps Swedes
were finding other locales in other states, but in Englewood
times were changing. The community, once a stronghold of
Svea, was becoming multilingual. The Swedes who still were
living there hung on during the Great Depression; but as the war
years came and went, post-war affluence seemed to beckon to
many Swedes, who moved to other parts of the city, to the su­burbs,
and even to other states.
This town of Englewood means a great deal to me. If I should
live to be 100, I shall never forget it. I was born there, of Swedish
immigrant parents at 5959 South Ada Street (our beloved " f e m
t u s e n " ) in 1911 and spent all of my youth in Englewood at 5915
South May Street. M y grade school was old Copernicus at 60th
and Troop streets, and my high school Lindblom at 61st Street
and Wolcott Avenue. I love the memory of Englewood generally
and the immediate vicinity of 59th and May streets in particular.
A l l the happy memories of my youth and young adulthood are
there. It was really home to me-—and even though I am now liv­ing
on the West Coast, it is still my "home."
My grandfather and parents often spoke wistfully of "back
home in Sweden;" and I now know what they meant, because
my wife and I speak about "back home in Englewood." Nostal­gically,
my mind returns there often, even though I know that it
is all gone with the wind like Scarlett O'Hara's Tara. Yes, gone
with the wind of change that comes to every great city in our
land. It is true that people still live there, certainly many fine
people, but none of my own. No kinfolk, family, relatives, or
friends—they have all moved away in search of better living
conditions, more room, greener pastures. Many have found
these things in the same city, some in suburban communities,
206
and others two thousand miles away, as I have done. But about
one thing I sincerely believe we are all agreed—that no matter
where we now are living, no matter what we have experienced,
those early days in wonderful old Englewood meant security,
happiness, and home, sweet home for us!
207

Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.

All rights held by the Swedish-American Historical Society. No part of this publication, except in the case of brief quotations, may be reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the editor and, where appropriate, the original author(s). For more information, please email the Society at info@swedishamericanhist.org

R E M I N I S C E N C E S O F C H I C A G O A ND
E N G L E W O O D
EDWARD E . OSBERG
History has always held me spellbound—world history, the
thrilling story of America, and the specific tale of Chicago, my
home town. Much have I learned and enjoyed at the Chicago
Historical Society in Lincoln Park. The exhibitions and
dioramas there have acquainted me with the history of the
Windy City. But this d i d not completely satisfy me. Not until I
stood on the exact site of the origin of the Chicago Fire of 1871
did I recall something from my earliest memories.
My grandfather had told me stories about his boyhood in
Värmland. Among the many tales was one that became im­pressed
on my mind and memory more than any other. When my
grandfather was fifteen years old, news of the great Chicago Fire
had reached his home town of Gunnarskog near Arvika. A l l
Swedes must have been shocked that a city larger than Stock­holm
had burned to the ground.
Inside the foyer of the Chicago Fire Academy is a bronze
plaque that states: " O n this site stood the home and barn of Mrs.
O'Leary where the Chicago Fire of 1871 started. Although there
are many versions of its origin, the real cause of the fire has
never been determined." I was surprised to learn that the
famous address, 137 De Koven Street, was so close to the down­town
area. Visiting the Academy on one of my return trips to
Chicago, I stepped up on the cement block, twelve by eighteen
inches in size, and viewed a diorama of the fire. Another plaque
told me: "You are now standing on the spot of the origin of the
great Chicago Fire on the night of 8 October 1871." There were
also many photographs of its aftermath in their collection.
As I pondered all this, I thought again about my grandfather
Anders Osberg. Born in poverty on 21 June 1856, he was a teen­ager
at the time of this fire. He never told me this, but he must
have thought a great deal about the new American nation and
very possibly Chicago, too. I feel sure that he never harbored
any thought of actually going there himself. He knew that many
200
Swedes from other provinces, even some from Värmland, had
emigrated to the United States. This is what he read in the
newspapers, and I believe he often wondered why many had left
the old country and where they all had settled. In his own com­munity
there was vague talk about such faraway places as New
York, Brooklyn, Jamestown, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Bel¬
lingham; but this was all too remote to be taken seriously.
Grandfather had often mentioned whenever I complained
about needing to go to school that he had only 172 days of edu­cation
in Sweden. By the time he was fifteen—while Chicago
A n d e r s O s b e r g a n d h i s g r a n d s o n E d w a r d , 1 9 1 3 .
201
burned—he was doing a man's job draining and tilling the wet
fields of western Värmland and helping his family eke out a liv­ing
on their small acreage. Married at twenty-four, he and my
grandmother became the parents of two children, their daughter
Emma and their son Hjalmar, who many years later in Chicago
became my father.
During these years, Chicago had recovered from the disas­trous
fire and was moving steadily toward becoming a major city.
The downtown area was totally restored, Swift and Armour had
developed the great stockyards, and the southern city limits had
already extended to 39th Street. Some seers ventured the opin­ion
that one day Chicago would reach all the way to Blue Island.
In the meantime nearly equidistant between 39th Street and
Blue Island, a small and struggling community was developing
around the junction of two railroads. This little community had
no real name yet. Some called it the Junction, some the Chicago
Junction, others Junction Grove, and still others the Rock Island
Junction. It was a small portion of Lake Township, a vast and
sprawling unincorporated area of wet marshland extending from
Hyde Park on Lake Michigan to Summit, Illinois.
Just before the Chicago Fire of 1871, a newcomer to Junction
Grove suggested that the place be named Englewood after her
home town in New Jersey. So Charles R. Hatch, the superinten­dent
of the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railway,
posted an order stating that "the name of the station at Chicago
Junction has been changed to Englewood." This made it official
in everyone's mind. Incorporation soon followed, and it has
been known as Englewood ever since.
In the large-scale immigration that came from all over Europe
following the American C i v i l War, Swedes were counted in ever
increasing numbers. For some reason, many of the pioneer
Swedish immigrants seemed to favor this new town six miles
south of Chicago. Immediately after the fire, there was a virtual
stampede for lots and homes in Englewood. The newly drained
land was good, streets and walkways were being plotted, and a
great building boom was on.
Traditionally, it seems that the Irish became policemen and
firemen, precinct captains and politicians; the Poles and other
Eastern Europeans steelworkers and laborers in the stockyards
and factories; but the Swedes—at least the Englewood ones—
became tradesmen and shopkeepers. Hardly a building in E n -
202
glewood was erected without the precise and painstaking work
of Swedish carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, plasterers, and
cement finishers.
At the time of the Fire, there were Swedes living in Chicago;
but it was really not until the 1880s and 1890s that the great ava­lanche
began. Emigration from Sweden was picking up momen­tum,
and the forty years following 1880 saw tens of thousands of
Swedes arriving i n America each year. Chicago, the city arising
from the ashes of the Fire, got its fair share of these Swedes.
They settled mainly i n four areas: the Belmont and Anderson-ville
districts, both on the north side, and the large Englewood
area and Grand Crossing at 75th and Cottage Grove, on the south
side.
My father Hjalmar Osberg came to America in 1899 at the age
of nineteen. He first tried his luck in the woods of northern
Minnesota as a lumberjack during the winter and on the farms of
North Dakota as a field hand during the summer. After several
years, he came to Chicago to learn the barbering trade and
landed on 59th Street in the very center of the Swedish part of
Englewood. Within a few years, he was able to bring his mother
and father from Värmland to America. He had met my mother
Signe Anderson at night classes in English at Englewood High
School, where dozens of Swedes came to learn the new lan­guage.
The night school English classes at Englewood High
proved to be invaluable to the newly arrived immigrants. Not
only d i d they learn the language quickly but they also had much
fun and frivolity. Many romantic matches for life were made
there, and my parents are prime examples of this.
My mother Signe had emigrated from Eskilstuna, Söderman­land,
in the spring of 1903 at the age of fourteen together with
her mother and father and a younger brother. Four older ones
and a sister had preceded them to Chicago several years earlier
to gain a foothold in the land of promise. They had all become
residents of the Swedish community in Englewood.
At the age of seventeen, my mother became a charter member
of the Linnea A i d Society. It was formed on 9 February 1906 at
the home of Mr. and Mrs. N . A. Nelson, who lived on West 60th
Street near Englewood High School. Twenty women from three
Swedish churches were the founders; and at the first meeting
Dr. A P. Fors, pastor of Bethel Lutheran Church, was present.
At this meeting the name Linnea was adopted. They decided to
203
S i g n e A . A n d e r s o n , C h i c a g o , 1 9 0 7 . M a r r i e d H j a l m a r O s b e r g,
1 9 1 0 .
meet regularly at Bethel Church, and membership invitations
were sent to the women of all the Swedish churches in Engle­wood.
An overwhelming response brought about the election of
officers and the writing of a constitution. One of their first proj­ects
was to supply linen and completely furnish a ward in the
newly erected Englewood Hospital. They also paid for this hos­pital's
patients who were without financial means.
Mother wore her Linnea pin proudly, and even as a small boy I
was aware of the vast scope of this organization. In 1909 the so­ciety
decided to expand the area of its work by aiding patients in
more hospitals and many other needy persons of Swedish de-
204
scent on the south side. Several Swedish homes for the aged in
Chicago have benefitted from and been cheered by visits from
the women of Linnea.
The membership dues were only ten cents a month, and
within twenty years there were about 1,000 women in the soci­ety.
Contributions by more affluent members far exceeded the
dues. The principal source of income, however, came each fall
from the proceeds of the annual concert by the Swedish Choral
Society, which usually performed Handel's M e s s i a h at Orches­tra
Hall accompanied by an ensemble from the Chicago Sym­phony
Orchestra. This was the musical highlight of the year, and
my mother would rather miss a meal than this extraordinary
production.
In unity there is strength, and it can be said that the Linnea
A i d Society brought about greater cooperation among the people
of different denominations in Englewood. Linnea has always
been true to its botanical name, for during its existence it has
strewn many a flower and spread much sunshine on the hard
paths of life—to uplift, cheer, and encourage human beings in
need.
Englewood was annexed to Chicago on 29 June 1889, eighteen
years after the Fire. When my father came here a dozen years
later, he was most happily surprized to find a large colony of
Swedes. The Englewood Businessmen's Association was an
outstanding civic organization. One of its first presidents was
Clarence O. Rosen, a Swedish realtor and a leader of the rapidly
growing Swedish community. Englewood sent a governor to
Springfield and later to Washington as a U.S. senator—Charles
G. Deneen. Many Swedes wanted him to run for the presidency.
His sister Florence was an excellent teacher at Englewood High
School for forty years.
My father's bank and the one for most of the Swedish busi­nessmen
was the United State Bank of Englewood at 60th and
South Halsted streets. It opened on 14 January 1914 with Simon
Heck as president and Carl Lundberg as cashier. The well-known
Swedish physicians and surgeons, Virelius and Dahl¬
berg, had just opened their South Shore Hospital, and the
Swedes streamed to them for health care. My own grandfather
was one of Dr. Dahlberg's first patients for treatment of a lip
cancer with the new radium regimen.
When Englewood needed a second high school, the officials
205
decided to name it the Robert Lindblom Technical High School
for Robert Lindblom, a member of the Board of Education from
1893 to 1896 and of the C i v i l Service Commission from 1898 to
1902. He was born in Örebro, Sweden, in 1844, migrated to
America at twenty years of age, and became a successful Chicago
businessman. He survived the Fire and later became one of the
most influential promoters of the 1893 World's Columbian Ex­position
as well as one of its directors.
The great Swedish immigration to the Englewood district
continued unabated all through the 1890s and the first two de­cades
of the twentieth century. Then just before the calamitous
stock market crash, it came to a sudden halt. Perhaps Swedes
were finding other locales in other states, but in Englewood
times were changing. The community, once a stronghold of
Svea, was becoming multilingual. The Swedes who still were
living there hung on during the Great Depression; but as the war
years came and went, post-war affluence seemed to beckon to
many Swedes, who moved to other parts of the city, to the su­burbs,
and even to other states.
This town of Englewood means a great deal to me. If I should
live to be 100, I shall never forget it. I was born there, of Swedish
immigrant parents at 5959 South Ada Street (our beloved " f e m
t u s e n " ) in 1911 and spent all of my youth in Englewood at 5915
South May Street. M y grade school was old Copernicus at 60th
and Troop streets, and my high school Lindblom at 61st Street
and Wolcott Avenue. I love the memory of Englewood generally
and the immediate vicinity of 59th and May streets in particular.
A l l the happy memories of my youth and young adulthood are
there. It was really home to me-—and even though I am now liv­ing
on the West Coast, it is still my "home."
My grandfather and parents often spoke wistfully of "back
home in Sweden;" and I now know what they meant, because
my wife and I speak about "back home in Englewood." Nostal­gically,
my mind returns there often, even though I know that it
is all gone with the wind like Scarlett O'Hara's Tara. Yes, gone
with the wind of change that comes to every great city in our
land. It is true that people still live there, certainly many fine
people, but none of my own. No kinfolk, family, relatives, or
friends—they have all moved away in search of better living
conditions, more room, greener pastures. Many have found
these things in the same city, some in suburban communities,
206
and others two thousand miles away, as I have done. But about
one thing I sincerely believe we are all agreed—that no matter
where we now are living, no matter what we have experienced,
those early days in wonderful old Englewood meant security,
happiness, and home, sweet home for us!
207